Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

On Tuesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures showing the biggest quarterly increase in housing prices in five years. But it's not just the price of owning or renting houses that is squeezing Australians; increasingly, it's just the cost of living in those homes. The rising costs of electricity, gas and other essential utilities are placing a heavy and growing burden on Australians across the country. Electricity costs rose by 32.2 per cent in the 12 months to January 2026, compared to a rise of 21.5 per cent in the year preceding. This represents an increase in the rate of growth of more than 10 percentage points in just one month. Part of the pressure on households come as state and federal energy rebates are wound back. That includes cessation of the Commonwealth Energy Bill Relief Fund. While these rebates did provide some important short-term relief during periods of high inflation and energy market volatility, their withdrawal means that now many households are fully exposed to the underlying cost of Australia's energy system.

But domestic policy settings are only one part of the story. We're also experiencing a period of increasing global instability. The latest conflict in the Middle East is echoing the market shocks that we experienced in 2022. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, national household gas and electricity prices jumped by 27 per cent and 43 per cent respectively in the year to March 2023, forcing the government at that time to spend billions of dollars on subsidies. Today, we're seeing similar warning signs emerge in global energy markets. Qatar's decision to suspend LNG production, which accounts for about 20 per cent of the world's LNG, will significantly disrupt global energy supply. Much as it was in 2022, Australia's domestic gas market remains very exposed to global market shocks. Despite us being one of the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, Australia's east coast gas market is tightly connected to international prices. When global prices rise, domestic prices too often rise as well. While the government has committed to implementing a domestic gas reservation scheme requiring LNG exporters to set aside 15 to 25 per cent of their gas for domestic use, that scheme will not come into action at this point until 2027. In the meantime, Australians, households and businesses remain vulnerable to high energy bills.

Gas only constitutes about six per cent of the overall energy mix in our national electricity market. But because of the way that the wholesale electricity market sets prices, high gas prices are still driving up electricity costs for households, and gas power generation remains vital back-up during periods of low renewable output and high demand. The east coast still has vast quantities of gas, but most of that gas is in Queensland and it's controlled by only three consortia. As production from the Bass Strait declines, the lion's share of production is going straight to export and the east coast still risks running out of gas. Around three million Australian households remain dependent on gas. In my home state of Victoria, that's 90 per cent of homes.

In this global context, at the time of an impending energy crisis, the need to invest in Australia's energy security and sovereign capability has never been clearer. The government's Cheaper Home Batteries Program was an important home upgrade initiative to help people electrify and bring down their energy bills. It saw more batteries installed in the last six months of 2025 than in the preceding five years altogether, demonstrating the effectiveness of targeted clean energy subsidies.

We need more of those sorts of initiatives. An obvious example is household insulation. Many Australian homes remain either underinsulated or uninsulated. Most Australian homes were built before minimum energy efficiency requirements were introduced nationally in 2003. The cheapest energy is the energy that you don't have to use. Targeted insulation upgrades can significantly improve the energy efficiency of existing Australian homes. It can help households to need and to use less energy, in turn helping to lower household energy costs and to reduce demand on Australia's energy grid.

Insulation is a cost-effective solution across all climates—hot and cold. Properly installed ceiling insulation can reduce indoor summer temperatures by up to seven degrees and winter heat losses by as much as 35 per cent. Through insulation alone, one million homes in Victoria could save more than 11 petajoules of energy in total, or approximately 3,085 gigawatt-hours every year. It's been projected that insulation could save Australian households between $400 and $800 in their energy bills annually, while reducing peak demand on our energy grid. So, not only is there a cost-of-living argument; household insulation will also help Australia reach our emission reduction targets.

All federal, state and territory governments have committed to net zero by 2050. Reaching this target will require a commitment to household energy upgrades—upgrades like insulation, like solar, and like home and community batteries—to improve energy efficiency across all of our Australian housing stock. Following the success of the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, I welcome the government's announcement of a $7.2 million expansion of that program. But at this point, as we look at the upcoming budget, I encourage the government to continue investing not just in this initiative but also in other targeted clean energy household subsidies. By investing in these sorts of measures—like insulation, solar and helping rentals electrify—Australia can ease the immediate cost-of-living pressures facing millions of Australians. Measures like these will help families lower their energy bills while reducing demand on our electricity grid and strengthening the resilience and security of our domestic market.

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